Digital meets Culture

Ancient Greek and Roman epigraphs going digital. A BPN that is going to start in early 2013

EAGLE, Europeana network of Ancient Greek and Latin Epigraphy

As Greek and Latin are the origin of European Culture, EAGLE is the Best Practice Network that brings together some of the most prominent European institutions and archives in the field of ancient epigraphy, to provide Europeana with the critical mass of quality-oriented content.

Classical Greek and Latin culture is the very foundation of the identity of modern Europe. A variety of modern subjects and disciplines as practiced today have their roots in the classical world: from philosophy to architecture, from geometry to law.

Epigraphy is characterized by 3 peculiarities, that EAGLE aims at touching:

The first one is that, as a field of study, classic epigraphy has evolved into three strictly separate disciplines, i.e. Greek, Latin and Christian epigraphy, characterized by separate collections and corpuses used for reference, separate publications, separate populations of scholars and researchers.

The second one is that inscriptions have traditionally been featured in geographically-separated archives, with the result that various inscribed documents that should be collated because of thematic or historic commonalities are often scattered across multiple collections. All these factors have so far seriously hindered research.

The third one is that, given the nature of the archives, their disjointedness and the lack of available translations, ancient inscriptions have for the most part remained the preserve of the specialist, and their enjoyment by the general public has been impossible. This is true for schools as well, whose history syllabi would benefit from the possibility of accessing inscriptions online.

EAGLE will improve the study of epigraphs in several ways:

aggregating the major epigraphic collections in Europe in a large, integrated online repository of ancient inscriptions, as part of Europeana;
mapping metadata from the various partner archives into a common intermediate format, which will enable customized EAGLE-specific services, as well as ease the job of mapping into the proper formats as requested by Europeana;
providing an easy-to-use content management system for epigraphic archives and institutions;
providing tools for automated metadata extraction harvesting and enrichment; the rich metadata will also enable cross-linking by specialists;
providing and curating a comprehensive set of metadata which include translations of the most important texts, so as to make epigraphic texts available for the first time in large quantity to the general public;
providing an infrastructure for extending the scope of translations, in the form of a wiki, which will enable specialists to add translations in other European languages even after the project expires;
providing a multilingual and not OS related “Flagship Mobile Application” for users of Smartphones to enable them to get information about one visible inscription by taking a photo and sending it to the EAGLE portal for recognition and for accessing the associated information in EAGLE;
providing a “Flagship Storytelling Application” to enrich, contextualise and link the epigraphs to one another and with other related information available in Europeana’s Linked Open Data cloud, thus contributing to reconstruct the thematic and historic commonalities between different inscriptions that are scattered across multiple collections;
establishing a Best Practice Network for the upkeep of the above common global resource, committed to its further expansion by attracting both new institutions and experts, and thus effecting the collaboration and interdisciplinary approach which have so far been lacking in epigraphy;

The EAGLE BPN represents a community of research institutions documenting the most recent progress in the study of Classical Epigraphy.

By aggregating digital content from unique and authoritative collections in its domain, the BPN brings together a significant quantity of information about ancient writings on ancient artifacts to the wide Europeana audience, thereby enhancing the quality of the historical experience and stimulating discovery in primary source materials never disclosed before to users on such a large scale.

In terms of broader goals, the aims of EAGLE are:

to enrich Europeana with a new type of content which is totally missing now and which can provide additional insight and knowledge about the roots and the development of the European culture;
to attract tourists and mobile users to Europeana, who will be able to access quickly info and translations pertaining to inscriptions of interest; thus, to establish a new community of mobile users revolving around access to inscriptions;
to provide specialists and Classical Greek and Latin culture enthusiasts (epigraphists, curators, researchers, students, etc..) a new unified resource and with rich metadata sets available as Linked Open Data in order to make the most of it;
to support the above community services through a dedicated ICT infrastructure.

Visit the Eagle website for more information on the project.

Pisa was invaded by hundreds of people. Sold out for the workshops.

The Internet Festival just closed: numbers from a success.

Over 65.000 people connected to the official channels for 2012 edition of the Internet Festival: Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, direct streaming and Internet site.

During this international event, that was held in Pisa from Thursday 4 to Sunday, October 7, about 30.000 unique visitors reached the website www.internetfestival.it and 11.770 people became fans of the Facebook page (which exposed the festival to a potential pool of more than 4 million people!). The festival was one of the top 5 most twitted events in Italy. During the festival 11.000 new users have registered to the city wifi network (Wifi Pisa and Serra)

These are the numbers for the Pisa event, which hosted 400 speakers, involved in over 150 events – including 107 meetings, 40 workshops, four exhibitions – in 22 locations (12 of which were connected live streaming on intoscana.it) .

Pisa was invaded by hundreds of people, and registered most of the events sold out; over 3.000 babies and families enjoyed the morning labs while over 2.500 people were present at the evening events “Impossible Interviews”.

The Festival confirmed to be an international event with a strong foreign presence in high technology conferences and meetings from Galileo to Jobs, and with very valuable speakers from all over the world, from China to Brazil, from Canada to France, from England to the United States.

In four days, the festival reminded Steve Jobs, paid tribute to Alan Turing – the scientist who invented artificial intelligence – talked about music and downloads with Italian pop singer Daniele Silvestri, and about open data on the Internet with the expert Salvatore Iaconesi.

Moreover, the Festival talked about the Internet and politics, economic crisis, public administration and information, daily life of new applications for smartphones. Sold out for the workshops, even the morning ones for children, where children had fun with the game conference – including the “Gates vs. Jobs. The War of the bit. ”

The festival presented over 10 start-up projects of young people under 30, gave visibility to the success of the webseries, discussed the limits of democracy on the web, on the future of books, the Arab revolutions and privacy at the time of the smartphone. And Wikipedia, Treccani and Encyclomedia themselves had to discuss about the future of the encyclopedia.

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DCH-RP will drive the dialogue among DCH institutions, e-Infrastructures, research and private organizations, to integrated their efforts into a common work

A new project for e-infrastructures dedicated to digital cultural heritage in Europe

Digital Cultural Heritage – Roadmap for Preservation

Digital Cultural Heritage Roadmap for Preservation is a Coordination Action supported by EC FP7 e-Infrastructures Programme, which will be adding more concrete results in the specific area of the digital preservation of cultural heritage.

It includes 13 partners:

5 National Authorities in the cultural heritage sector;
3 European Associations;
4 E-infrastructure providers;
1 SME.

The main objectives of DCH-RP are:

to harmonize data storage and preservation policies in the DCH sector at European and international level
to progress with the dialogue among DCH institutions, e-Infrastructures, research and private organizations
to establish the conditions for these sectors to integrated their efforts into a common work
to identify the most suitable models for the governance, maintenance and sustainability of such integrated infrastructure for digital preservation of cultural content.

The main outcome will be a Roadmap for the implementation of a preservation e-infrastructure for DCH, supplemented by practical tools for decision makers and validated through a range of proof of concepts, where cultural institutions and e-infrastructure providers will work together on concrete experiments.

DCH-RP Roadmap is intended as the first instance of the Open Science Infrastructure for DCH in 2020.

DCH-RP will establish a practical liaison among the participants to the project that can represent a model of cooperation also for the rest of the sector. It will start with its thirteen partners, will then move to the 20 ‘external partners’ from Europe, Taiwan, India, Malawi, USA and South America who have already expressed their intent to participate to the study with the aim, eventually, to become pan-European and global.

digitalmeetsculture.net project manager, Antonella Fresa, has been appointed as Technical Coordinator of the project. Technical coordination is provided for the achievement of general project objectives, to coordinate and facilitate the work of the project. Quality assurance and internal evaluation will be provided as well. Dissemination tasks of the DCH-RP project will be supported through digitalmeetsculture.net.

The kick-off meeting of the DCH-RP project took place in Rome on October 8th 2012, hosted by Coordinator ICCU Istituto Centrale per il Catalogo Unico.

Related documentation:

DCH-RP: The EU Partners and contributors met for a full day meeting in order to plan and start the project activities (Rosa Caffo) (Roma, kick-off meeting, 08/10/2012)
Overview of the Workplan and Project Management (Antonella Fresa) (Roma, kick-off meeting, 08/10/2012)

ATHENA 3D Technology for ancient theaters

ATHENA 3D: digital training in Jordan for ancient theaters.

from Dr. Marwan Asmar (Chief Project Editor of Ancient Theatres Enhancement for New Actualities-ATHENA Project)

The use of digital technology has become important for the preservation of heritage and culture. In the ATHENA Project of Ancient Theaters Enhancement for New Actualities 3 D technologies have become part-and-parcel in the work actions to halt the progressive decay whilst inducing sustainability of these age-old ancient structures.

The acquisition of the latest laser scanner and total station by the Department of Antiquities (DoA) in Jordan as part of their leader role in the collective consortium of Italy, Tunisia, Algeria and Spain, is helping to conserve ancient theaters in the Euromed region by profiling and documenting them as well as providing the necessary training.
“The top-of-the-art scanning technologies have been essential as a way for more effective documentation and to halt the progressive decay of these ancient theaters because these are precision instruments that allow you to detect the minutest of cracks in different facades and profiles,” says ATHENA Project Manager Nizar Al Adarbeh.

As part of the ATHENA spirit of cooperation two DoA surveyors completed their training on the new technologies under the direction of an Italian team from the Dipartimento di Storia dell’ Architettura, Restauro e Conservazione dei Beni Architettonici e stato of La Sapienza University. Soon after they started to use the equipments to scan, document and analyze the collected data of the different archaeological sites in Jordan.
In addition to Petra and Jarash which they have trained on and collected enormous amount of data, surveyors Jamal Safi and Tawfiq Al Hunaiti scanned and documented the UNESCO World Heritage Site Qusair Amra, Umm Qais and Tell Emari as well as many others in the Kingdom.
“We have done much work in the digital scanning of very important sites in the Kingdom, and now these are documented and ready to be used for restoration purposes,” says Jamal Safi, who together with Al Hunaiti received the final part of their training in data analysis in Rome in March 2012.
As well as digital profiling, the two-man team under the direction of the ATHENA Project in the DoA also began holding training workshops as a means of spreading the knowledge and knowhow about these new technologies’ acquisitions to professionals involved in restoration works.

The first training was held at the Amman Odeon in the downtown area between 19-24 May, 2012 for 17 members of staff of the different sections of the Department of Antiquities to allow them to become familiar with the new technologies as these are very important tools in the process of documentation.

The second training session was held in Amman Roman Theater between 2-4 September, 2012, for 16 staff from the different DoA directorates in Jordan, coming from as far as Karak in the south of the country, mid-Jordan Valley, Amman and from the north including the Irbid, Ramtha, Ajloun and Al Qoura areas.
These training workshops were made in two parts. The “theoretical” side was carried out in the DoA auditorium were trainers Al Safi and Hunaiti talked about the equipments and importance for documentations and archaeological preservation. At this stage the trainers demonstrated the different functions and uses of the laser scanner and total station and allowed participants to examine them.
The practical side of the workshop training was in the field. “This was the case in both the Odeon and Roman Theaters training in Amman where participants took part in actual scanning and surveying of different facades and structures,” says Tawfiq Al Hunaiti, adding they began by actual sketching of the facades, photography and then the actual scanning on the machines.
“We wanted to hold these workshops because the ATHENA Project believes the staff and employees will benefit from knowing about the new technologies in the DoA to be used for restoration and cultural heritage,” says Al Adarbeh.
Although the participants were small in number, they include managers and administrators, curators, archaeological inspectors and lab technicians, carefully chosen across the board from these archaeological directorates some of whom cover many sites in their particular region which means they can tell the other managers and officers working in the field about these high-level equipments that can be used for conservation purposes.
“As professionals working in archaeological conservation and heritage, we need to know about new technologies to help us in our work,” said Khaled Al Zyout, conservation inspector in the Ajloun Archaeological Directorate which covers 220 sites in the north of the country and who attended the Amman Roman Theater training.
The Curator of the Saraya Museum in Irbid Alia Khasawneh is on-board as well. “From what I heard and practiced, these equipments seem to be very effective for conservation, and I am already wondering about the possibility of them being used to scan our museum since it is a very important Ottoman building,” she said.

The new laser technologies are already being practiced within the ATHENA collective. Al Safi and Al Hunaiti and Italians Luca Senatore and Chiara Capocefalo from Sapienza University completed the scanning of Carthage Theater and its amphitheater in late June/early July 2012 and the Jordanian team will be scanning the Cherchall and Tipaza Theaters in Algeria in mid-October.
The new technologies are part of the EU-funded ATHENA Project and is under the Euromed Heritage Program 4.

These new technologies provide for very effective ways for the preservation of heritage and culture in the Euromed region and goes to sustain these ancient theaters for many generations to come.

More information:

Athena Project Official Site

See Digitalmeetsculture related article on Athena Project

Pisa, 6 October 2012

Meet the Media Guru in Pisa: Beth Coleman

During the Internet Festival in Pisa (4-7 October 2012), a special edition of Meet the Media Guru event will take place at Cinema Teatro Lux, Saturday 6th October 6 pm – 8 pm, free entrance. Meet the Media Guru is an initiative born in 2005: a programme of meetings with international leaders in digital culture and innovation, aimed at both the professionals and the generale public.

Special guest of the Pisa event is Beth Coleman, one of the most prominent voices in new media culture. Professor Beth Coleman researches and creates media design on virtual worlds, x-reality, geofilms, machinima animation, and race as technology. She is teaching in the fall on transmedia storytelling/ARG design, geolocative media, and the history of media and technology.

Her most recent book, Hello Avatar, provides a comprehensive look at contemporary uses of virtual world and augmented reality platforms. It addresses the recent (2004-2008) public interest in virtual worlds— three-dimensional interactive online platforms— that has moved the subject beyond research lab and niche-user communities.

Hello Avatar walks the reader through several virtual world platforms, giving the book’s audience a first-hand experience of this new medium.

The event will be live streaming on www.intoscana.it, and www.meetthemediaguru.org.

Further information:

Beth Coleman’s officiale website: http://cms.mit.edu/people/bcoleman/index.html

Meet the Media Guru official website: http://www.meetthemediaguru.org/ (italian language)

Internet Festival official website: www.internetfestival.it

See Digitalmeetsculture article for the event

An interesting 3D digital exhibition in Singapore.

3D exhibition: the mysterious Liao Dynasty of Inner Mongolia

For the first time in Singapore, China’s archaeological findings unveil the mysterious tomb of the Liao Dynasty in the Tu Er Ji Mountains. This significant discovery represents the Khitans’ influence and prominence in Inner Mongolia.

Embark on an exciting journey through a 3D digital exhibition of cultural relis back to the past and discover the wonderful culture and history of one of the most important lost dynasties in Chinese History: the Liao Dynasty.

3D digital Relics Exhibition

12-21 October 2012, Jurong Regional Library, Singapore

The exhibition closed on October 21 and hosted a special talk about the Herotage of the Khitans.

The talk was performed by Mr. Tala, Director of Inner Mongolia Museum, Vice-Chairman of China and Inner Mongolia Archaeology association, Professor cum Lecturer at various universities and expert in the studies of the Khitan tribe.

More information here.

Download the Exhibition Poster (JPG, 1 Mb)

The whole consortium met in the aristocratic Palau Moja on La Rambla, for a friendly and very important project meeting

Europeana Photography – Barcelona plenary meeting

by Valentina Bachi

Palau Moja is a neoclassical style aristocratic palace, built in late 1700 by the Marquis of Moja and his wife Maria Luisa Copons. Currently, it is the headquarter of the Department of Cultural Heritage of Generalitat of Catalunya (GENCAT), which was hosting the meeting.

A very prestigious location to host a prestigious meeting, said Anna Busom of GENCAT. Cristina Sanchis of GENCAT told us that the palace, now belonging to the Ministry, hosted Saint Giovanni Bosco, King Alfonso XII and the King Joan Carlos, when he was crown prince.

The meeting was set in the Blue Room, very near the room containing an astonishing vintage collection of scale reproductions of boats, being the Palau Moja in the late 1800 the residence of Antonio Lopez y Lopez, stakeholder of a transatlantic company.

The atmosphere in the Blue Room was extremely friendly and warm, as the whole consortium was very happy to meet again. The meeting was intended to sum up the project progress up to now and to make plans for the next 6 months. Progress is going on according to the schedule as for content selection and digitization.

Hard work was done by KMKG for the Vocabulary and metadata issues, and by NTUA for the developing of the online tool – which will allow the ingestion of EuropeanaPhotography metadata to Europeana.

A live demo performed by Nikos Simou of NTUA showed in Barcelona that the MINT ingestion tool is almost ready to be used.

Voices from the partners express better than anything else the global mood of the meeting and the project:

Anna Gruskova from Bratislava Theater Institute: “This project is an opportunity for me to meet people, not only abroad but also in my country, to know what they do and to enrich both the value of my institution and myself!”

Hubert Francuz from MHF, the Photography Museum in Krakow: “This is the first EC project that our Museum participates in. For us, it is an occasion to go beyond national programmes and to get in touch with EC: to be known, now and also for the future.”

Viktorija Jonkutė, from Lithuanian Art Museums, was recently appointed as EuropeanaPhotography referent for her institute. She comes for the first time in an international occasion, and she says: “There is really a friendly and warm atmosphere, I didn’t suppose that so many important partners were so informal and confidential!”

In the next period work will go on as well, and there will also be a shift of management, due to strategic reasons, that will keep boosting the project. Pilots for the testing and use of the MINT tool will be performed by some volunteer partners with the coordination of NTUA. Fall will also be a busy period for dissemination.

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Pisa, 4-7 October 2012

INTERNET FESTIVAL 2012 – Shaping the Future

The Internet Festival explores the future inside a city rich with events, conferences, experiences, workshops. Opportunities for exchange and learning are provided by over 100 experts, influencers, critics, politicians, entrepreneurs, top users, artists and passionate users from around the world.

The future is present, October 4 to 7, 2012 in Pisa. The city is a symbol of the Italian digital age since the first degree course in computers started here in 1969, and over 50 years ago the first calculator was invented in Pisa. So it is a logical location for the 2012 edition of the Internet Festival, an important event to discover and explore the latest tendencies and developments for the future of Internet.

The event is promoted by the city and province of Pisa, along with the Tuscan region, as well as: the Camera di Commercio di Pisa, Cnr, Registro.it and Istituto di Informatica e Telematica del Cnr (research center), Università di Pisa, Scuola Normale Superiore, Scuola Superiore “Sant’Anna”, and the Associazione Festival della Scienza. It is under the direction of Edoardo Fleischner. This year’s theme is ‘Shaping the Future’ and the rich programme of events and meetings explore the connections and relations that, thanks to the internet, redesign the social, cultural and economic landscape at a global level.

The Festival is coordinated by Fondazione Sistema Toscana.

The program will be divided into three thematic areas:

• Internet for Citizens (I4C): digital democracy is the theme here, an opportunity to explore new forms of urban development and dialogue online; to look at participation in political representation (especially in elections in both Italy and the USA); to present new and innovative applications of technology to public service and health sectors that impact daily life.

• Internet for Makers (I4M): this section will analyze the theme of business and economic development introduced by the internet.

• Internet for Tellers (I4T): a discussion of the internet as locus for the expression of opinion where liberty and rights are limited or censured – the amplification of the voices of dissidents, minorities and the persecuted – and how internet can be an efficient tool for specific political strategies.

The guests of the festival are experts, researchers, artists, entrepreneurs, critics, top users and regular, interested people from the whole world, who will be protagonists in shows, labs and meetings that will animate the whole city.

Digitalmeetsculture.net is Media Partner of the event. See

Download the full programme (pdf, italian language).

Download the press release (pdf, english)

Follow Internet Festival through streamin video here

Follow Internet Festival on Facebook, Twitter, Youtube

Internet Festival 2012 Official Website

Information at: info@internetfestival.it

Musical, choreographic or theatrical performances pave the way for new forms of collaboration and creation.

Teleperformance: collaborating towards new artistic forms.

New technologies have opened new perspectives in the artistic field. Nowadays, numerous artistic and cultural projects use those technologies as tools, subjects or medium to explore and express new visions of the real and virtual worlds. One of these technologies, the teleperformance, consists on using the modern web to support technologies that allow instant two-way communication between the computers and the server almost instantaneously. Several projects were developed, based on devices enhancing the fluidity of the exchanges for teleperformances, letting artists to collaborate in wider networks. Whether musical, choreographic or theatrical performances, all of these projects pave the way for new forms of collaboration and creation.

– Chrome Web Lab – Collaborating orchestra in real-time |July 2012 – Science Museum of London

The Chrome Web Lab project opened in July in the Science Museum of London, presenting 5 interactive experiences among which the Universal Orchestra. This device allows users from all over the world to play with musical instruments installed in the Science Museum, through their Chrome navigator. “Musicians” from all over the world can play in a musical conversation and record 3 minutes sessions that are broadcasted on the project website.

This prototype, based on a real-time collaboration system, uses WebSockets so the user’s browser takes strings of information and transforms them into music, and a dedicated web server, allowing all of these conversations to take place from all over the world.

– Me and my shadow: Choreography teleperformance

June 2012 – MADE / EU’s Culture Programme (2007-2013), CDA Enghien-les-Bains, Body>data>space, Transcultures, boDig

http://madeshadow.wordpress.com/

Me and my shadow consists of 4 installations situated in the cities of the project partners: London, Enghien-les-Bains (Paris), Istanbul and Brussels/Mons. These installations operate as online portals, connected in real-time. They give access to a 3D shared virtual environment and allow the simultaneous interaction of the public. Equally accessible, the ’5th space’ website follows and informs on the project development.

The object of this work is to invite the user to interact and to communicate with both their own representation and with that of other users, in a visual and sound universe, immersive and progressive, combining motion capture (based on multiple Microsoft Kinects) and telepresence. The ‘shadows’ that users cast in the virtual space can at the same time sculpt three-dimensional objects and sound, while their movement also allows navigation and interaction with other users. Each user is encouraged in this way to experience in real-time a true physical and ubiquitous choreographic language but also to explore new connections between the geographical, social, physical and virtual universes of these 4 places.

– “Dieu est un DJ” – Teleperformed theatre

May 2012 – Théâtre de l’Usine / Mapping Festival – Genêve, Société des Arts Technologiques – Montréal

http://www.insan-e.net/dieuestundj/

« Dieu est un DJ” connects stages from Montreal and Geneve to dialogue simultaneously, looking for a common space. The project, developed in the frame of Contamine (national and international artistic exchange program of Québec), has been created thanks to crossed residencies on multidisciplinary research and creation on the field of digital art. Vincent de Repentigny and Julien Brun, who directed this play, written by Falk Richter, define the teleperformance as “giving and having the impression to be in another place, to project ourselves through images, sounds and/or actions in another geographic space”. In fact, three spaces were involved during the representation: one in Switzerland, one in Quebec, and the third one on the 4^th dimension, where spectators from around the world could assist to the representation via streaming.

Video Téléprésence (in French)

EuropeanaPhotography UK partner Topfoto is doing an amazing job for digitization of ancient photos.

Topfoto: from England to Europeana

The large fleet of cars on the quayside at Monte Carlo for the purpose of conveying tourists round the sights - February 1925

TopFoto is an independent picture library based 45 minutes south of London in Edenbridge, Kent, England. The archive contains 10 million images from medieval documents to today’s digital files being sent in by FTP from all over the world.

The core of the hardcopy archive comprises of 120.000 negatives from John Topham (an individual photographer and TopFoto’s founder) plus millions of negatives and hardcopy prints from a variety of historic press agencies that have been collected by the current owner, Alan Smith, since 1975.

TopFoto supplies primarily editorial content to clients but is extremely diverse and its pictures are reproduced in all areas of visual publication. TopFoto was a pioneer in digitisation and electronic transfer and through new technologies has formed close links to international partners in over 40 countries around the world.

Holiday makers at Brighton 1937

TopFoto employs 15 people and prides itself on the specialist personal research service that it provides to clients.

For the EuropeanaPhotography Project, TopFoto is digitising negatives (mostly quarter plate glass negatives but including some very fragile nitrates) from its collection between the dates of 1890-1939. After adding metadata, it will make 60.000 images available on the Europeana website.

TopFoto has identified four key collections to concentrate on for the project:

Central News, 1890 – 1930
The collection was the picture library of the news agency of the same name est. 1870. It has world coverage and includes many masterpiece portraits of Royals and famous personalities from the era.
Alfieri, 1914 – 1939 (c.20.000 relevant glass plate negatives)
Was a London based agency that supplied images to the weekly press and magazines. Although it had a global network it primarily covers London and the surrounding area with a specific focus on society and London life during this fascinating period between the wars.
Planet News, 1928 – 1939
Contains a wide range of editorial news events from all over the world. This collection also has some isolated nitrate negatives on important subjects that we would like to rescue, including Russian spy trials and the Spanish Civil War.
John Topham, 1927 – 1973
John Topham’s legacy, the founding collection of TopFoto image library, is over 120,000 negatives of superb social history capturing the disappearance of rural life as the South East of England began to disappear under a swathe of concrete. The Arts Council of England funded a touring exhibition of his work, Memory Lane, curated by the Impressions Gallery in York, and his work is significant to the Imperial War Museum and the Museum of Rural Life, amongst others. Topham began as a policeman in the East End of London in the 1920s. When he sold his first picture for the equivalent of a week’s wage, he quit the Force and from 1931-1973 he photographed, as he put it, the “little things of life – the way it really was”.

John Balean and Alan Smith during EuropeanaPhtography kick off meeting, february 2012

John Balean, international manager, is the key contact for the Digitisation Project at TopFoto; he explains about the work for EuropeanaPhotography:

The job is already started with an excellent workflow, so that it is possible to process 300 images in an eight hour shift at a very high resolution (40MP), thanks to Phase-One digital facilities. We have it set up to only scan negatives but in the downtime we could with extra equipment do flat art. (In the meantime flat art will continue to be done by flatbed scanners.) Our project requires and the practicalities of keywording limit us to 100 images per working day.

John has also given lectures and written about the picture industry including, Editor of the 2008-2009 CEPIC Image Trading International, Chair of Free Pictures – Friends or Foes? at the 2009 CEPIC Annual Congress, a contributor to Photo Archive News (www.photoarchivenews.com), and as the Consultant Researcher to the Press Photo History Project (www.pressphotohistory.com):

We have started with Alfieri and will follow this with Central News, Planet News and the early work of John Topham. All these archives are wholly owned and almost entirely exclusive. This will improve our margin and should create a honey pot for researchers who want to see unique and often never before seen images. These facts and the grant will obviously have a beneficial effect on our operation.

The first 500 images digitised for EuropeanaPhotography (from the TopFoto Alfieri collection) have now been added to www.TopFoto.co.uk.

If you want to take a look at some of the content please visit the page here

Learn more about the work Topfoto is doing in the EuropeanaPhotography project in the dissemination booklet (PDF, 5,20 Mb)

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